Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Alfred Douglas
Lewis Carroll
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Alfred Bruce Douglas was born on 22 October 1870 at Ham Hill House, near Powick in Worcestershire, into a family whose rank, wealth, volatility, and theatrical public reputation would shape his life almost as powerfully as his literary gifts. He was the third son of John Sholto Douglas, ninth Marquess of Queensberry, and Lady Sybil Montgomery, daughter of the first Baron of Abergavenny. The boy was known from childho…
“All good poetry is the result of struggle and effort.”
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who became immortal under the name Lewis Carroll, was born on 27 January 1832 at Daresbury, Cheshire, England, and died on 14 January 1898 at Guildford, Surrey. He was a Victorian clergyman, Oxford mathematician, logician, lecturer, photographer, inventor, letter writer, satirist, and author of some of the most celebrated imaginative literature in the English language. Yet the word “author”…
“Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”
About 130 km separate Ham Hill House, Worcestershire, England from Daresbury, Cheshire, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Alfred Douglas: ham hill house, oscar wilde, the chameleon, two loves, magdalen college, the spirit lamp, french symbolism, salomé. Lewis Carroll: daresbury, cheshire, guildford, victorian clergyman, oxford mathematician, alice's adventures in wonderland, through the looking-glass, jabberwocky.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Alfred Douglas: Irony, Sorrow, Longing. Lewis Carroll: Irony, Joy, Wonder.
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